Precious Blood(27)

“Of course I am. Who in God’s name would want to murder—” Actually, he did know who might want to murder Cheryl Cass. He couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure—Cheryl had been so damned coy—but there were things she had said, things he hadn’t been able to put together at the time. He’d forgotten about it, because those were the things she’d talked about the first time. When she’d come back, all bubbly and warm and euphoric after her trip to Peg’s, she’d been on another track.

He looked up to find Judy staring at him, and flushed uncomfortably. “Now, Judy,” he said.

“‘Now Judy’ nothing,” Judy said. “Let’s face it, Andy. There are lots of people who might have wanted to murder that little tramp. I would have murdered her to keep her mouth shut about Black Rock Park.”

“You’ve got more guts than other people.”

“It doesn’t take guts, Andy. It just takes panic.”

“Last I heard, it took means, motive, and opportunity.”

“All of which you had.”

“No, I didn’t. Motive, certainly. Means, I could have used Kath’s plant poison. But opportunity—I think you’re forgetting it was Ash Wednesday. I saw Cheryl at five. At five-thirty, I was standing in front of the altar at the church, griming up the faces of little old ladies from Ellery Street.”

Judy was thoughtful. “It might not have been Ash Wednesday,” she said. “They didn’t find her until the Sunday after and she’d been practically frozen. They’re not sure when she died.”

“They’ve got a pretty good idea. Nobody saw her after Ash Wednesday. I also read in one of those papers you think I don’t read that she hadn’t been registered at any of the hotels.”

Judy cocked her head at him. “You really mean all this, don’t you? You’re not worried about any of it. You’re almost enjoying yourself.”

“I’m not almost enjoying myself, Judy dear. I’m enjoying myself very much.” He grinned. “Here I am, absolutely in the clear, and there he is, the old fart, getting ready to make an ass of himself. I’m having a great time.”

And that, Andy thought, as he watched Judy staring at him with her mouth wide open, was the most truth he’d told about anything in his life.





[2]


At eleven o’clock, just as he thought he had wrapped it all up and could get on his way to bed, the buzzer on Father Tom Dolan’s intercom rang. He stared at it in shock. He knew, of course, that the Cardinal was working. The Cardinal was always working. No matter how hard he tried, or how often, he was never able to get to the office before the Cardinal did. But the Cardinal was a sensible man. He knew what kind of shape Tom would be in at eleven o’clock at night on Wednesday of Holy Week. There had been the final plans for two dozen group baptisms to be coordinated today, the Cathedral Easter Mass schedule to be finalized, the trip to St. Agnes’s to be organized. All clergy and religious attached to the Chancery were, by the Cardinal’s order, expected to spend the days from Holy Thursday through Easter in contemplation and prayer. That meant they had to have their details cleaned up, and most of those details were Father Tom Dolan’s responsibility. Hell, Father Tom Dolan always thought, would be an eternal Wednesday of Holy Week, with the pamphlets for the Stations of the Cross service missing and the ride schedule for the nondriving elderly in a shambles and not a single one of the Easter dinner baskets ready to go out to the houses of the poor. He didn’t count ordinary business, like finding temporary housing for parishioners who’d been evicted from their apartments or extracting some CYO delinquent from the clutches of the juvenile justice system. Never mind the homeless shelters, the soup kitchens, the walk-in clinics, and the adult literacy programs. Never mind the Knights of Columbus, the Holy Name Society, the Fatima Novena, and the Vocations Club. Sometimes he wondered who had appointed him Lord High Czar of Catholic Welfare and then given him practically nothing to work with.

His buzzer was buzzing and buzzing, short sharp jabs followed by long complaining wails. In any other year, he would have been convinced the Cathedral was burning down. At least. That was what it would have taken for the Cardinal to come looking for him at a time like this. This year, though, was an utter and unnerving mess. The Cardinal had been jumpy ever since Peg Morrissey Monaghan had come forward to identify Cheryl Cass from a picture in the Tribune—and why she had done that, Tom would never know. If she’d kept her mouth shut, the body would have been carted away to Potter’s Field and had nothing to do with them. Now Demarkian was here, his arrival announced by a call from Scholastica at St. Agnes’s, and the Cardinal was jumpier still. Tom was beginning to think the Cardinal was even less happy with this situation than Tom was himself.